Catching up on camera

TECHNOLOGY: Corporates are shifting loyalties to web and video conferencing - makes economic sense, they say.

With transactions being carried out at breakneck speed, one missed call today could result in losing a precious deal to your competitor.

Cost reduction has driven globalisation, telework, outsourcing and decentralised company structures, which call for better communications infrastructure. Luckily, technology has quickly risen to the occasion.

Boardroom video conferencing, once considered a privilege of Fortune 500 executives, has permeated to PC desktop users worldwide. And in the near future, the video conferencing will take its rightful place "" next to a phone or a fax machine as essential business tools.

According to market research firm, Frost & Sullivan, video conferencing market in 2005-06 touched Rs 65.6 crore as against Rs 28.8 crore in 2004-05.

It is likely to grow at a CAGR of 24.9 per cent till 2011. The report also anticipates a growth of over 30 per cent in the next two years, beyond which growth rates should stabilise at 22 per cent.

In an effort to ease the discomfort of jet-lagged executives, who are burned out due to extended business travel, companies like Polycom, Hewlett-Packard, LifeSize, Cisco, Avaya are working hard to ensure that video conferencing systems simulate real-time and face-to-face meetings over long distances.

According to the Frost & Sullivan study, Polycom's video conferencing solutions enjoy a market share of 60.9 per cent in India. Yugal Sharma, country manager (India & SAARC), Polycom, marks the future growth as stemming from the government departments, big corporate houses, banking, service providers and the ITES/BPO sector, who are fast graduating to sophisticated video conferencing solutions.

"Manufacturing, healthcare, enterprise and education come a close second, followed by e-learning vendors, system integrators, document management software companies, instant messaging vendors and bridge vendors," he says.

For customers, the value of web and video conferencing is becoming increasingly hard to ignore. "Now that the cat is out of the bag, virtual meetings will become more frequent and those who remain doubtful will be required to overcome their prejudices," explains Shantanu Prakash, managing director, Educomp, an e-learning solution provider.

Enterprises like Educomp, he claims, will be talking and marking up files in real-time in the near future rather than emailing large files back and forth.

"We have got something that makes economic sense. Even companies which say that they will not shift to virtual conferencing will have to eat their words," Prakash states.

In terms of reducing capital expenditures, organisations claim to have cut their travel budgets to half by shifting loyalties to web and video conferencing for meetings with offshore clients, colleagues, trainings and providing sales presentations in lieu of in-person visits.

Vivek Porwal, national marketing manager (messaging & teleconferencing), Avaya GlobalConnect, which provides end-to-end solution consulting, design, deployment and managed services for videoconferencing solutions, says, "Avaya GlobalConnect has deployed more than 400 end-points, and some complex solutions in the government sector that involve integrating old technology to the emerging technology."

Institutions like State Bank of India, Bank of India, UBI, ABN Amro, SAIL, NDDB, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, NIC, several state secretariats, courts, and even a few jails like Tihar have switched over to videoconferencing to save time and manpower resources.

William Yu, general manager (APAC), LifeSize Communications, says, "In 2006, there has been a significant increase in the adoption of web conferencing within the enterprise market and we have seen a gradual shift from audio meetings to web conferencing and desktop video."

With broadband making inroads into Indian enterprises, SMEs, web conferencing is further gaining ground among corporates. Industry estimates predict that by 2009, web conferencing software and services, including video, voice and data, should be a $9 billion industry globally.

But it's not going to be a smooth run. Factors like cost of ownership, maintenance of infrastructure and the general perception about video conferencing as an item of luxury could possibly impact growth of this market, feel most players.

"At present, most of the enterprises connect via ISDN. However, Internet-based connections are increasing in popularity and many public rooms have come up in India which allow conferencing over the IP network. So, bandwidth issues at the back-end need to be addressed to ensure that benefits of video-conferencing can be availed," says Yu. A wakeup call for the tech-challenged!